City crews have logged 258 addresses with frozen services and meters since January, said Sue Foune, managing director of the Kalamazoo Department of Public Services. Records from 1978 indicate the city received 250 to 300 reports of frozen services.

As of Wednesday, the city had reports of 32 frozen water services out of its 120,000 customers, down from 65 on Monday and a high of around 100 in February. Of those 32 frozen services, 12 have been connected to other sources of water, such as neighbors.

Customers with frozen pipes still have a two-week wait to get service restored as crews deal with limited access to welding equipment for the job. Foune said some addresses have had frozen services two or three times.

In response to the uptick, crews have built six pieces of equipment to help them thaw frozen water pipes.

Foune said the city's maintenance workers replicated a design from the city of Marshall to build six hot water systems that will help them thaw lines. Until now, crews have used two welders which take two to eight hours to thaw water lines, and have not been able to find more equipment to buy.

The additional equipment will help city crews "get out there more and hopefully get this problem addressed," Kalamazoo City Manager Jim Ritsema said.

Crews use the two welders to thaw ice by heating the service pipe and use the six hot water machines to melt ice by using a hot water stream heated to 160 degrees, Foune said.

Foune said Monday city crews were thawing more water lines with the added equipment, but were not necessarily getting ahead. For example, on the first full day of using all eight pieces of equipment, crews thawed 15 lines but also had 15 new requests for frozen water lines.

"We will have days where it's hardly any new frozen (requests) and then days where it's a bunch of new frozen (requests)," Foune said.

Ritsema on Monday reiterated the city's warning that customers should run their water constantly at a pencil-sized stream until further notice. City officials have said customers who do so will receive a credit on their water bills.

Foune said crews also are battling water main breaks. Between Feb. 27 and Feb. 28, 12 water main breaks were reported. In those cases, Foune said, the mains had cracked enough to lower water pressure to customers but not enough to cause the water to have to be shut off.

Emily Monacelli covers local government and beer for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact her at emonacel@mlive.com or follow her on Twitter.